St Pancras International becomes ‘St Pancreas’ for one day with impromptu charity flash mob

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Pancreatic Cancer Action teamed up with St Pancras International on 11th March 2014 to highlight the mispronunciation of St Pancras and raise awareness of pancreatic cancer, the UK’s fifth biggest cancer killer, with an impromptu flash mob.

The performance, carried out by thirty dancers from Living the Dream Dance Company, followed a survey carried out by St Pancras International to find out how commonly people mispronounce common words. The survey revealed that over 82% of Brits admit to mispronouncing words and place names.

A third of people wrongly say ‘St Pancreas station’. Wendy Spinks, commercial director of HS1 (owners of St Pancras International) – said: “We are always hearing people referring to the station as St Pancreas when we walk round and with the rise of social media, more and more people are mixing the two up both in speech and text.

The survey found that the words people have the most trouble getting their mouths around are:

Ely (59%)

Keighley (40%)

Sherbet (40%)

Et cetra (34%)

St Pancras (33%)

Espresso (26%)

Bruschetta (25%)

Often (24%)

Prescription (21%)

Greenwich (16%)

The choreographed routine included performances to tracks from the film Dirty Dancing, which starred Patrick Swayze, who sadly lost his battle to pancreatic cancer in 2009, just 20 months after diagnosis.

Ali Stunt from Pancreatic Cancer Action adds: “While it can be amusing when people mix up St Pancras and St Pancreas, it also serves as a positive inadvertently by raising awareness of a disease that has been little known for far too long. Pancreatic cancer has had the same shockingly low survival rate of three per cent for 40 years. If more is known about the disease and its symptoms, this will hopefully lead to more people being diagnosed earlier and an increase in the number of survivors so any awareness is a great.

“The flash mob was a huge success as we were not only able to put a smile on people’s faces but given the opportunity to hand out leaflets and raise vital funds for the charity,” continues Ali. “We were grateful to St Pancras International for allowing us to raise awareness at the station and to the performers from Living the Dream for putting on such a great performance.

“We are asking the general public to help us raise awareness by sharing the flash mob video across social media.”